ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what Gadamer’s hermeneutic phenomenology has to offer in exploring the intersections of race and disability. It draws upon a longitudinal ethnography of African American families raising children with significant disabilities or illnesses. Opening with a clinical encounter between a child diagnosed with autism and his speech therapist, the chapter looks at moments of clinical surprise that sometimes occur when children act in ways that call diagnostic categories into question. Such moments are often supremely important for parents who are wary of disability labels, fearful that being designated a Black child with “special needs” diminishes a child’s life chances. The chapter takes up key themes from Gadamer’s work, including his articulation of prejudgment in the experiential structure of understanding and his elaboration of an Aristotelian phronesis or practical wisdom. It argues that Gadamer offers much for a critical phenomenology of structural violence.
